Unaccounted For

by Nan Willard Cappo

  On Friday after work, Milo was stretching his hamstring muscles on his front lawn when a Wolverine Motors van pulled into the driveway. Zaffer got out, also in running shorts, grinning like someone who’d just won a slot on The Bachelor. From the passenger seat Titan whined happily.

  “She loves the air conditioning,” Zaffer said. Milo didn’t blame the dog; he couldn’t wait till Zaffer fixed the AC in his truck. Zaffer thought he should get used to desert conditions before he shipped out to Afghanistan. Milo tried to convince him they could be fighting Canada by the time he finished ROTC and he’d die of thin blood, but so far Zaffer wasn’t convinced.

  “Do they know you’ve stolen one of their vans?”

  “The Deputy Fleet Supervisor has overnight privileges,” Zaffer informed him. “Which means it came in filthy at the last minute, and Harry said wash it. So—got anything heavy you need moved?”

  “Just you,” Milo said. “Five miles.”

  They headed for the park, where Milo managed to keep up with Zaffer, if not with Titan, and even pass his friend in the stretch of road before his court. When they reached the Shoemaker house Titan was still loping along as though she could run forever. Milo struggled not to vomit.

  He was arguing with Zaffer, in gasps, about who was really faster, when someone called his name. A small white-haired woman in pink plaid leggings was crossing the street with a covered dish in her hands. Milo got to his feet.

  “We made too much baked ziti, Milo, and I know how you like it,” Mrs. Gillespie said. If the quality of their cooking was any indication—and Milo had sampled a lot of it—the catering company she and her daughter had started should become wildly successful. “Who’s driving the van?”

  “Mrs. Gillespie, meet my slow friend, Ben Zaffer,” Milo said. “He’s a big deal at Wolverine Motors. Runs the weed whacker.”

  Zaffer just grinned in exhaustion. Mrs. Gillespie transferred the dish to Milo’s hands, then eyed the silver van knowledgeably, walking around it. “We almost bought one of these, you know, the E-series. Good mileage, and no windows in the back for people to see inside. Perfect for catering. Well, I guess you know that, it’s just like the one the caterers at your dad’s funeral had. But we ended up getting a used minivan. Much cheaper.”

  Milo would drop the bowl in another moment, it was so hot. He sensed Zaffer sit up. “You saw a van here for the funeral? I didn’t realize you’d moved in yet.”

  “Oh, we didn’t close on the house till February. But I got the realtor to let me measure for drapes right after New Year’s. I didn’t know about the funeral until I met Mrs. Hall the next day.” She waved toward a house a few doors down. “I was measuring the picture window when the caterers pulled up. A silver E-series, just like this. I remember it because like I said, we’d been pricing them for weeks, me and my daughter.”

  “Do you remember their name?” Milo asked. “I forget who we used.”

  She squeezed his arm sympathetically. “You had bigger things to worry about than food, didn’t you. I am so sorry, Milo! It was Leonard Brothers Catering. They didn’t have a nice painted logo like this, though.” She patted the dark-blue lettering in “Wolverine.” “Just one of those vinyl magnet signs you can take off when you want to use the van on private business. I thought that was so smart I had the same kind made for ours. My husband takes it fishing, and you can imagine the fellows on the pier if he showed up in ‘Viv and Deb’s Magic Meals.’”

  The casserole was burning his palms. “Thanks for the food, Mrs. Gillespie. I’ll run the dish back after dinner.”

  Zaffer followed him into the kitchen. There was a note taped to the refrigerator: We’re at the eye doctor’s.

  “Some coincidence.” Zaffer wiggled a cheese-covered noodle out from under the tin foil. “Those caterers having a van like the ones at work.”

  “Yeah.” Milo ran cold water over his hands. The spicy scent of Italian sausage filled the kitchen. “Especially since the ladies from church did everything. We didn’t have any caterers.”

  ***

  Chapter 8

  Zaffer’s brown eyes gleamed. “She saw the robbers?”

  “Sounds like it.” Milo took a tape measure out of the junk drawer and headed back to the driveway, Zaffer on his heels. He measured the blue and red painted Wolverine logo: Now We’re Smokin’. This was no big, splashy design. Even the flames around the letters fit compactly on the side panel of each door in a space… “Two feet by eighteen inches. Easy enough to cover up,” he said.

  “Shoe.”

  The single syllable was full of unease. Zaffer shared his loyalty to their employer. “If the robbers were from Wolverine, the last thing they’d do is use a company van.”

  “I didn’t say they were from Wolverine. Maybe they used a van like this because there’s a million just like it out there. And did like Mrs. Gillespie said—stuck a temporary sign on it for the job.” Milo retracted the metal tape measure with a snap. Or maybe, he thought, they were from Wolverine and weren’t very smart.

  “You didn’t want to know who robbed your place. Case closed, you said.”

  “That was when I didn’t have anything to go on.”

  And that had been months ago. When the shame of his father’s fraud had smothered any inclination to learn more. Now, in the bright warmth of a different season, Mrs. Gillespie’s casual comment both bothered and excited him. Who had robbed their house, and why? Alf Farnon assumed it was gamblers. Gamblers with a van just like the ones at Wolverine?

  “At least I can look up Leonard Brothers.”

  “Harry keeps a van log,” Zaffer said, and Milo could hear his friend’s reluctance yield to the thrill of investigating.

  Milo felt a similar thrill, but for different reasons. Had he not been aching for a chance to distinguish himself in front of Alf Farnon, to repay him for all his help? What better way than to uncover some lowlife gamblers who were using Farnon’s company as a base for a robbery ring?

  Unfortunately, any daring feats of detection would have to wait until Monday. Meanwhile, Milo had to survive the parish picnic. This annual event at a nearby lake had long been booked for the third Saturday in June.

  “Should be cute girls there in bathing suits,” his mother said archly.

  Milo had attended St. Matthew’s his whole life. “Only if they bus them from Toledo,” he said, and Gloria laughed.

  She had come a long way since Christmas. Milo was proud of her. She’d even had coffee once with a male teacher from Ann Arbor she’d met through an online writing site. True, she’d gone on for hours afterward about how to get a picture book self-published, but anything that made her put on earrings was good. Milo didn’t plan to live at home forever.

  Even the twins seemed more winsome now that he spent forty hours a week away from them. There were worse ways to spend a Saturday than letting twenty kindergartners jump off his back into the water. He told his mother to count on him.

  Picnic day dawned bright and hot. Milo was wiping lake water from his eyes when someone much larger than Joey snuck up and dunked him.

  He came up sputtering to hear both twins squealing as Zaffer tossed Jenny up in the air.

  “What are you doing here?” Milo was so glad to see him he didn’t dunk him back.

  “You said you’d be here all day, so we thought we’d keep you company.”

  “We?”

  In the parking area, attracting almost as many admiring glances as the car she leaned against, Ellie Farnon had a beach tote over one shoulder and a hand shading her eyes against the sun. When she saw Milo spot her, she waved.

  Milo whipped the Frisbee up to her. She caught it one-handed. “Good arm,” he said to Zaffer as they splashed toward the beach. “Who called who?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Jesus, Zaffer. She’s not some cashier at Wal-Mart.”

  “So? I don’t care where she buys her bikinis—”

  But Ellie had reached them, and Milo could no
t wrestle Zaffer to the sand.

  “Hey there,” she greeted him.

  “Hey yourself.” Smooth. Bet she was glad she’d come all the way out here.

  In fact, she did seem glad. She made him lead her to his mother so she could thank Gloria for “letting them crash the party.” Even if it hadn’t been Alf Farnon’s daughter, these good manners would have won his mother over.

  “Heavens! No crashing at all! There’s always too much food at these things, and Milo will have a much better time with kids his own age.”

  So much for passing himself off as man of the house. Ellie just laughed and took off her shirt, revealing a blue and green striped bikini Milo doubted had ever seen a Wal-Mart. He got her and Zaffer away then and into the lake, where the three of them entertained a mob of the twins’ friends until Gloria called them to eat.

  They sat cross-legged on a blanket. A Eucharistic minister’s boom box blared a rock station. In the roofed pavilion the parish men cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on charcoal grills. Jenny had adopted Zaffer’s pretty new friend; she couldn’t keep her pudgy fingers from stroking the thin gold chain around Ellie’s ankle. Milo’s mother, too, plied Ellie with attention.

  “So Ellie. Is it just you and your dad at home?” she asked, lifting the crock pot of baked beans from its nest of crushed newspaper.

  “Yes, just the two of us.” Her mother had died of cancer three years earlier, she said. Over Gloria’s cluck of condolence Ellie said quickly, “We do fine! We have a great housekeeper. Frances stays over whenever my dad’s out of town.” She unsnapped her anklet and handed it to Jenny, “just to borrow, I need it back, my father gave it to me.”

  She glanced at Milo as though he’d spoken. “Well, he told me to buy something nice, which comes to the same thing,” she said. Gloria was regarding her with obvious sympathy which Ellie, just as obviously, did not want. “And I have Phoenix, my watch cat. And Beth, my roommate from college, is coming out in August for a whole month. I’m definitely not alone.”

  Milo poured her some iced tea. Anyone who had to count their cat as company struck him as pretty damned solitary.

  “And now you’ve got us,” Zaffer put in. Milo nodded with approval. “About that roommate—how attractive would you say she is, on a scale of one to ten? You being a ten, of course.”

  Ellie gave her silvery giggle, Milo’s approval soured, and Gloria declared the twins had eaten enough and could go. Ellie retrieved her chain before Jenny and Joey raced off to build sand castles with the other small, sunburned Catholics.

  The blanket took on a peaceful, adult air in their wake.

  “I met your father at my husband’s funeral,” Gloria said. “I’ll never forget how kind he’s been. First to Tim, and then Milo…to all of us. A wonderful man.”

  Ellie refastened the thin gold chain. Milo had seen anklets before, of course. Just not on a leg as finely made as this. “I was really sorry to hear about Mr. Shoemaker,” Ellie said softly.

  “Thank you, dear. Tim loved Wolverine. And he thought Alf Farnon hung the moon. Didn’t he, Milo?”

  “Hmm? Oh, right.”

  “But people must always be telling you how thoughtful your father is,” Gloria said.

  Ellie smiled. Yes, they were. “He says being Christian’s good for business. You know Leslie?” she asked Milo. “She couldn’t find work for ages after her car crash—nobody wanted the health costs of someone in a wheelchair. But my dad told HR to hire her. He says people with a strike against them end up working twice as hard, if you treat them right, as ones who could pick up and go anywhere. We’ve got four ex-cons on the payroll, and parole officers are always sending us more. There’s a shoplifter right on your floor.”

  Milo wondered what Christ would think of this bottom-line-driven benevolence. Then whether Amber or J’azzmin was the shoplifter, which would explain why one of them, at least, had been hired.

  “My husband had eighteen years of accounting experience,” his mother said stiffly. “He would have found something equally good if Wolverine hadn’t worked out. He certainly didn’t have a criminal record.” She got to her feet. “I’d better go help with the desserts.” She walked toward the pavilion with quick, offended steps.

  On the blanket the silence lasted as long as it took Ellie to realize what had happened. “What did I—I didn’t mean your father!” She stared, appalled, at Milo and Zaffer. “God no! I was just—she said how thoughtful my dad is and I was just…I never—”

  She looked as though her squirt gun had fired a real bullet. Milo laughed. “Don’t worry about it. She’s a little touchy, that’s all.”

  “Anyway, Shoe’s the real charity case, Ellie. Wait’ll his boss figures out he only owns one pair of pants,” Zaffer added.

  But Ellie stared forlornly after Gloria, who’d disappeared into a chattering crowd of women.

  Milo searched for a change of subject. His eye fell on the crumpled newspaper that had kept the baked beans from spilling.

  “Have you been following this? That little girl who disappeared?” He smoothed out the paper. The story had

  been on the evening news for the last several nights. A six-year-old from Hillsdale County had disappeared from her own front yard, and police had no leads beyond one “person of interest.”

  Crime of any kind drew Zaffer like a magnet. “You watch, it’ll be some lowlife boyfriend of the mother’s.”

  “Whoever did it, they should fry the bastard,” Milo said.

  That made Ellie look at him. “Remind me not to let you on my jury.”

  “And they should let the mother pull the switch. Relative Justice.”

  “I thought Catholics were against capital punishment,” she said.

  Too late Milo remembered she was the daughter of St. Alf, the Good-for-Business Christian. Still, at least she wasn’t fretting anymore.

  “The Church is. But the state allows it.”

  “Actually, Michigan doesn’t. We learned that in Intro to Criminal Justice.”

  Oh, right, she’d been to college. “So say we’re in Texas.” Milo had only been trying to distract her, but now he found his argument compelling in its own right. “If no one in the family has the guts to pull the switch, okay, let the state do what it sees fit. But I bet you if bad guys know a victim’s family will set their sentence, and not a judge or jury, they’ll think harder before killing someone. An eye for an eye. The Bible’s okay with it.”

  “Not the New Testament,” Zaffer said, and turned his head to wink at Ellie.

  Milo saw it. “Since when did you start turning the other cheek, Rambo? You wouldn’t be out for blood if someone killed your mother? Your sisters?”

  “Sure I would. And if the cops couldn’t catch them I’d hunt them down. But I’d let the system punish them.” Zaffer grabbed a plastic fork and pretended to inject Milo’s leg with it. “I wouldn’t beg to stick the needle in myself.”

  “If this little girl turns up dead, I bet her mother will want to kill the killers,” Milo said stubbornly. “I’m just saying.”

  “And would that bring her daughter back?” Ellie asked.

  “It would even the score.” Milo swatted at his calf, which Zaffer was poking with more insistence. Didn’t Milo want a chance with this girl? Did he really mean to come off like some redneck vigilante?

  Zaffer threw the fork away and pulled Ellie to her feet. “Speaking of scores, I challenge you to water polo. Winner gets to drive your car around the park. Moscow rules.”

  He dragged her off and Milo heard her laughing as she asked, “What are Moscow rules?”

  Ellie and Zaffer left an hour later, Gloria bidding them a gracious farewell that made Ellie send Milo a relieved smile. Milo watched the little red car head for the gates. Where were they off to now? The day went flat, as though someone had let the air out of it. His aunt and uncle showed up in mid-afternoon and Milo didn’t need coaxing to turn Jenny and Joey over to their cousins. Aunt Grace joined his mother in the pavilion an
d Milo was free to work on his tan.

  He stretched out on the blanket. After some retributive dunking, Zaffer had admitted that Ellie called him that morning looking for something to do.

  “She had your cell number?” Milo had demanded.

  “I gave it to her. You should try it.”

  But he wouldn’t say whose idea coming to the picnic had been. Milo pondered possibilities while voices overhead drifted in and out of his consciousness.

  “Move it over here, that’s too much sun, all right, that’s good—“

  “Grace, wherever did you get that cover-up, it is the cutest—”

  “Jason took the last brownie and he already had three—”

  He stared unseeingly at the lake. The reflected sunlight reminded him of the way water droplets glistened on Ellie Farnon’s smooth bronzed back. She’d trounced everyone at water polo. Farnon’s words from last March suddenly came to Milo, how he wished he’d had a son. “I’d have taken him camping,” he’d said. Of course, being a good swimmer didn’t mean you liked to camp. And really, one girl feeling lonely was a small price to pay for everything Wolverine Motors had accomplished. Lonely! Let her watch the twins for a week, let her play Candyland till she wanted to set the board—or herself—on fire. She’d never complain of loneliness again.

  Hang on. Had she complained? Milo thought back to the conversation at lunch. “I’m definitely not alone,” was what she’d said. Well. Good. A person with a living father—especially a father like Alf Farnon—had nothing to complain about.

  Hell, she was even rich. He thought of a song his mother sometimes sang. Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes. That chain had to be real gold, she was that kind of girl. Though the ankle it adorned didn’t need any help…. Milo drifted to sleep.